Presented by Robert Clark MP		www.robertclark.net

Bracks Government to seize planning powers

News Release - Wednesday, 28th April 2004

The Bracks Government is set to give itself the power to force through high rise, high density developments in Box Hill and other suburban shopping centres.

Whitehorse Council will be stripped of its planning powers in new "priority development zones" that the Government intends to establish around Transit Cities such as Box Hill, and around other shopping centres.

The Government announced the move in its Economic Statement released last week (20th April). As the Economic Statement put it:

"New Priority Development Zones will be created in which the Government will have lead responsibility for approvals for projects of State and regional significance. This will enable the Minister to establish decision making and management arrangements that reflect the scale and complexity of particular projects.

"To support these new arrangements, the Government will establish an expert Priority Developments Panel to work closely with project proponents and local government to speed up decision-making processes.

"These new Priority Development Zones could be applied to Melbourne 2030 projects such as Transit Cities and selected Activity Centres.

"These new arrangements will come into effect in 2005."

Despite all the fine words, what this announcement means is that in future, planning decisions in these special development zones will be controlled by Planning Minister Mary Delahunty and her planning bureaucrats.

The future of our neighbourhoods will no longer be primarily decided by elected community representatives. Residents will have little, if any, say in what happens.

The Government has already made clear in its Melbourne 2030 policy that it wants to see high-rise, high-density housing developments around Box Hill and other suburban shopping centres, and to push population growth into these developments.

This threatens profound changes to our suburbs and our way of life.

These new zones will give the government complete power to force this through, and will take away from the community any right to try to prevent it happening.

At present, if the Government wants to impose a planning decision on the community, it has to "call in" individual planning applications, or re-zone individual development sites.

Because this has to be done on a case by case basis, the Government's actions can be questioned and challenged every time these powers are exercised.

This at least gives the community an opportunity to protest and object on each occasion, and the Government must defend and justify its decision every time it exercises these powers.

In the past, under Governments of both political persuasions, such interventions in individual planning proposals have been challenged by the community, and have proved controversial. This has limited the circumstances in which Government has exercised those powers.

However, under the new powers the Bracks Government is giving itself, the Government will be able to impose a special development zone over the whole of the Box Hill district centre and its surrounds in a single decision, and then approve whatever developments it likes within that zone.

The Government is also giving itself the same power over what it describes as "selected Activity Centres". However, an "Activity Centre" is simply the Government's term for a local shopping centre.

This means that any other shopping centre in Whitehorse or beyond can also be made subject to the same Government planning powers if the Government so chooses.

I am calling on Whitehorse Council and other local MPs to join me in opposing this move, and to defend the suburbs we know and love against this arbitrary seizure of sweeping planning powers by the State Government.